Council loosens green space mandates
From Denver Post, by John Aguilar, [email protected]
The Lakewood City Council has revamped a controversial land-use ordinance that city leaders hope will break a logjam for approval of badly needed housing projects.
The measure, passed 8-0 by the council late Monday, is aimed at balancing a fervent desire by residents to preserve as much green space and parkland as possible in Colorado’s fifth-largest city with the need to create affordable homes in a region that is sorely lacking in residential units.
Most notably, the city of 156,000’s new ordinance restores the ability of homebuilders to buy their way out of making land dedications in certain cases — a practice called fee-in-lieu. The change reverses the core of the original measure adopted by the council last fall that placed a clear emphasis on preserving green space in Lakewood.
The council’s move Monday night also breathed renewed life into a controversial 411-unit apartment building that is slated for the east edge of Belmar Park, a project that was stymied by stricter land dedication rules adopted by the city last fall. That proposed project is what prompted the battle over how much green space to preserve in the city.
Cathy Kentner, a Lakewood resident and former mayoral candidate who helped spearhead an effort last year to put a mandatory land dedication measure before voters, called the council’s overhaul of the legislation Monday a “bait and switch.”